Abstract
We demonstrate one-dimensional sub-Doppler laser cooling of a beam of YbF molecules to 100 μK. This is a key step towards a measurement of the electron's electric dipole moment using ultracold molecules. We compare the effectiveness of magnetically assisted and polarization-gradient sub-Doppler cooling mechanisms. We model the experiment and find good agreement with our data.
Highlights
We demonstrate one-dimensional sub-Doppler laser cooling of a beam of YbF molecules to 100 μK
Measurements of the electron’s electric dipole moment using molecules tightly constrain the parameters of theories that extend the Standard Model [14]
Strong polarization suppresses systematic errors arising from motional magnetic fields and geometric phases [20]
Summary
We demonstrate one-dimensional sub-Doppler laser cooling of a beam of YbF molecules to 100 μK. The first molecular determination of the eEDM used a beam of YbF molecules, obtaining the limit jdej < 10.5 × 10−28 e cm [10]. Proposals have been made [13,40,41,42], laser cooling has not been applied to the molecules needed for EDM measurements.
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